Pulp culture: Exhibition at Smoke the Moon proves that flimsy paper can hold some seriously deep art

A paper moon is a make-believe moon, and a paper tiger is a make-believe threat. A paper airplane plan is bound to fail, and maybe it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. If I paper over something, I haven’t really fixed it. Anti-paper prejudices run deep; they’re embedded in our language. Even in the art world, where we sometimes like to think we’ve moved beyond hierarchies of media, works on paper remain undervalued.

I’ve always appreciated the directness of drawing — the proximity of the artist’s hand to the page, unmediated by a long paintbrush or other distancing tools. A quickly dashed-off drawing has the vigor of human spontaneity, the feeling of life being lived in the moment. A meticulously detailed, labor-intensive drawing, on the other hand, reflects the artist’s dogged commitment and willingness to devote significant mental and physical labor to a vision they believe in. Both kinds of drawing — fast or slow — are intimately and meaningfully human. In our age of AI slop and digital brainrot, hand-drawn works on paper are more valuable than ever.

Both kinds of drawing are featured in “Pulp: A Drawing Show” at Smoke the Moon. Mickey Zacchilli’s faux-naïf magic marker drawings are quickly scribbled with a nervous, erratic hand. In works like “Untitled (Night Terror)” and “Untitled (Laying Awake),” Zacchilli confronts her own insomnia-fueled anxieties and hypnogogic nightmares through humor. On the other end of the spectrum are Casey Jex Smith’s obsessively detailed, almost sculptural-looking fantasyscapes that make me think of the etchings of Albrecht Dürer or the illustrations of weird sea creatures by 19th century naturalist Ernst Haeckel. With their M.C. Escher-like optical illusions and “Where’s Waldo”-esque hidden figures, Zacchilli’s drawings are endlessly engrossing.

The show’s tongue-in-cheek title references the cheaply produced comic books and lurid magazines of the early 20th century known as “the pulps,” and some of the 16 artists in “Pulp,” in fact, descend from that artistic lineage by way of comic books, tattooing, DIY zine-making and related subcultures.

Simone Claudine’s delicate pointilist drawings incorporate imagery frequently seen in tattoos — hearts with cursive lettering, crosses, roses, “Felix the Cat” cartoons and women who cry big, stylized teardrops. Claudine’s work also bears stylistic affinities with paño art — an illustrational style of handkerchief painting, partly influenced by tattoo art, which originated among Chicano prisoners in the Southwest in the middle of the 20th century. I also see a High Renaissance quality in the idealized beauty of her figures and the architectonic symmetries within her compositions, as if she’s taking the “pulp” content and melodrama of tattoo art and infusing it with the formal structures and emotional gravitas of Raphael. She’s one of my favorite artists in the show.

Heather Benjamin got her start in DIY zine culture, making photocopied books of drawings and flyers for punk shows. Her sphinxes and other animal-women hybrids in go-go boots recall the 1960s and ‘70s-era cartoony psychedelia of Hairy Who artists Gladys Nilsson, Karl Wirsum and Suellen Rocca. Like them, Benjamin uses lots of zig-zaggy lines and blocks of acid-hued colors that leap off the page, and her figures, like theirs, are self-confident and sexually transgressive. It’s the kind of art I’m naturally drawn to — humorous, rebellious, optically engaging. But is it too similar to Hairy Who art from a half-century ago? If Benjamin kept the same style but updated her references, perhaps I’d feel like I’m in a 21st century fever dream, as opposed to a nostalgia trip.

Some of the most intriguing works in the show are by Joshua Drayzen and Anne Quinones, who both manage to create mystifying puzzle pictures with very few elements. Drayzen has developed an idiosyncratic personal mythos of moths, owls, Knights Templar crusaders, Norse mythology and UFOs. His images are always outlined with precision, centered on the page and not overly complex, but I’m still generally baffled by what they’re supposed to be. 

“Spirit Beam” looked at first glance like an old Chinese junk, whose sail is brightly patterned with a fluorescent orange, yellow and blue wood grain texture. Drayzen created this odd texture with Magic FX colored pencils that allowed him to draw in multiple colors without lifting his hand from the page. The boat part — or is it a balance beam? — has what I thought was Chinese writing on it, but which I later learned were representations of ancient Roman “dead nails,” or funerary charms. The “sail” part — or is it a curved beam of light? — has clusters of disembodied ghosts interspersed among the fluorescent markings. 

What’s it all mean? Dead nails, ghosts, a balance beam — are we balancing between life and death? 

I fear that to understand Drayzen’s art completely, I might have to follow him down a long rabbit hole of conspiracy theories linking Norse and Roman mythologies to medieval crusade lore, ancient aliens and UFOs. I’m not opposed to that, for I suspect — based on the confidence and originality of his drawings — that Drayzen knows what he’s doing, and the payoff will be worth it. Hopefully, I’ll get to see a solo show of his someday, and all mysteries will be revealed — or only deepened. Either way, I want to see more.

Quinones’ androgynous figures are grotesquely emaciated yet somehow still muscular. She poses them unnaturally, like marionettes. Some have toothy grimaces. Some have bodies that appear to have been cut open, then Frankensteined back together with red thread. They’re as creepy and disturbing as 16th century painter Matthias Grünewald’s “Isenheim Alterpiece” — one of the most grotesque crucifixion scenes of all time. Quinones’ vague body horror narrative is reinforced by titles like “Split Skin,” “Natural Decay” and “Creeping Through.” But is it about psychological trauma, body dysmorphia, physical violence, literal surgery? Next to her figures, she often pastes cutouts from old black and white newspapers or magazines, but those image fragments are even more cryptic. I think some of them are from the Apollo 11 moon landing, but it’s hard to tell. There’s more story here than meets the eye, as with Drayzen’s work, and I want to learn more. 

To be honest, Quinones’ work didn’t instantly grab me the way Zachilli’s, Claudine’s, Benjamin’s and even Drayzen’s did. I don’t always love creepy art, so that’s part of it. But I also thought it might just be creepy for the sake of creepiness — a bit of a one-trick pony. I kept coming back to it, though. Long after I left the exhibition, Quinone’s works were the ones that kept bubbling back up in my brain. They disturbed me, not only because the imagery was disturbing, but also because I couldn’t quite figure them out. This happens a lot. I’ll go to a group show, and the work I think I like the least is the stuff I can’t get out of my head. Like the grain of sand that irritates the oyster until it produces a pearl, works that irritate or disturb me often continue to prick at my subconscious until, if I’m lucky, they produce pearls of wisdom. I believe there’s wisdom to be had in Quinones’ work, and it's probably going to stick in my mind until I discover what it is.

The 16 artists in “Pulp” take vastly different approaches to drawing, but they are all equally committed to drawing as a practice distinct from painting. They do things with drawing that simply can’t be done with oil on canvas. Some of the artists are influenced by pulp-adjacent genres, such as comic books, zines or tattoo art. Some indulge in “pulp” themes, such as UFO conspiracies and female monsters. But all of them use the intimacy of drawing to establish a human connection with the viewer. As we follow their lines on the page and trace their lines of thought, we enter into their daydreams and fantasies, their fears and anxieties. Big paintings might make people “ooh” and “ahh,” but it’s the little drawings that often feel more personal, like secret notes, diary entries, whispered thoughts or momentary confessions. The paper may be flimsy, but the art is deep.

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the Albuquerque Journal. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at @loganroycebeitmen.